Editor:
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's attempt to rule Alberta with his head in the sand is not working for him.
After he was elected, he trotted off to Ottawa in an attempt to bully Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a list of demands and he came home and dug in.
Following continuous embarrassments over the War Room – the latest being the battle with Bigfoot – Kenney raised his head long enough to taut it's valuable work and to justify the importance of routing out this damaging threat to our oil and gas industry.
Kenney didn't see American President Joe Biden's cancelling of the KXL pipeline coming. He was sucker-punched, he says. Biden and former American President Barack Obama were joined at the hip during their administration and stopped KXL. Trump gave the go ahead and was stopped by numerous court injunctions. Cancelling the KXL was one of Biden's campaign promises.
Now the carbon tax. Kenney lost to the Supreme Court, nonetheless. Kenney says he was "surprised" by the decision. When do all these costly misadventures stop?
Kenney's $30 million for the War Room each year has been ineffectual and embarrassing. The KXL, well Kenney threw at least $1.5 billion in equity investment and billions more in loan guarantees, and he's not finished. How much will that cost Alberta taxpayers?
And now the carbon tax. He says he was "surprised" by that outcome too and has no back up plan here either. With the NDP's carbon plan, those monies were re-invested in Alberta. Some of the money came in rebates and other went into important projects. Kenney called that "squeezing" money out of taxpayers to spend on their "pet projects."
The top court of the land said reducing greenhouse gas emission is "a matter of national concern. The matter ... is an existential threat to human life in Canada and around the world" and "irreversible harm would be felt across the country."
Kenney needs to throw in the towel. Please stop throwing tax dollars away.
Marilyn Foxford,
Canmore
